Wall of building blocks



March 18, 1958 W. A RlCE WALL OF BUILDING BLOCKS Filed July 7, 1954 INVENTOR.

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United States Patent- 40 WALL F BULDING BLGCKS William A. Rice, San Marino, Calif.

Application July 7, 1954, Serial No. 441,960

1 Claim. (Cl. 72-40) (Granted under Title 35, U. S. Code (1952), sec. 266) The invention described herein maybe manufactured and used by or for the Government of the United States of America for governmental purposes without the payment of any royalties thereon or therefor.

This invention relates to a building element of the nature of a building block or brick having its horizontal faces so shaped as to interlock with other like elements, and with rounded ends to permit the elements to be used in the construction of a curved or angled wall without sacrifice of the interlocking feature.

An object of the invention is to produce a building element having versatility or flexibility to permit it to be used in many different sorts of structures, and which may be laid by unskilled persons and with or without mortar.

A further object of the invention is to provide a building element which may be cheaply manufactured, in that close tolerances in shape or dimensions are not required.

Other objects and many of the attendant advantages of this invention will be readily appreciated as the same becomes better understood by reference to the following description.

Fig. l is a view in perspective of a building element which embodies the invention;

Fig. 2 is a similar view of a modified form of the invention; v

Fig. 3 is a plan view of a series of elements similar t0 that shown in Fig. 2;

Fig. 4 is a fragmentary view of a corner or intersection of two walls constructed of elements embodying the invention;

Fig. 5 shows a circular wall constructed of similar elements;

Fig. 6 is a fragmentary View similar to Fig. 3 but showing a further modified form of element; and

Fig. 7 is a fragmentary sectional view of a pair of blocks of the form shown in Figs. 2 and 3 and showing the spacing between a boss and socket.

In the description hereinafter the element is referred to as a brick, although it will be understood that it may be of any desired size, and may be used as a building block. The brick 8 shown in Fig. 1 is of generally parallelepipedon forni and may be of the dimensions of an ordinary brick, and may be formed of ceramic, cementitious or other material. The ends are rounded in the vertical plane, as shown in 10', 11 and the brick is formed with two bosses 12', 13' on its upper surfaces, with corresponding and oppositely disposed sockets or depressions 14', 15 on its under surface. Preferably the bosses and sockets terminate inwardly of the periphery of the element, leaving a horizontal strip 16' therebetween.

In the modified form shown in Figs. 2 and 3, the brick may be similar to that shown in Fig. l except that vertical bores 20, 21 extend through the bosses and their opposite sockets. A preferred geometry of the brick is shown in Fig. 2, in which the ends 1G, 11 are semi-cylindrical and the bosses 12, 13, sockets 14, 15, and bores 20,

` 21 are concentric therewith. Geometrically, the bosses are segments of a sphere, and the sockets are segments of the same size sphere but of greater depth, so that when the bricks are laid in courses in the usual break-joint fashion as shown in Fig. 4, there is a space of uniform vertical thickness between the socket of one brick and the boss of the brick below it, enough to allow for manufacturing variances and to allow for the presence of a certain amount of foreign matter such as sand which may intervene between them.

The centers 22, 23 are spaced from each other by a distance slightly greater than the diameter of the cylinder defined by ends 10, 11. The result is that when the bricks are laid in courses, there will be a slight gap between the ends of adjacent bricks, as indicated in broken lines at 1S in Fig. 3. This spacing is not changed by rotating the bricks to form a curved or angled wall, nor is the concentricity of members 10, 12, 14, 20, etc. changed by such rotation.

For the purpose of forming a low wall for retaining purposes, the bricks may be laid without mortar, the bricklayers skill not being required. For a more stable and permanent structure, mortar may be used in the usual manner, and as shown in Fig. 5, vertical reinforcing rods 26 may be used; sometimes such rods, if of a diameter but slightly smaller than that of bores 20, 21, may be used to advantage when mortar is not used, and may be driven into the ground to anchor the wall in place. The grouting between the ends of adjacent bricks may take the form of that shown at 2S in Fig. 3 but if full grouting is desired it will be of advantage to use the form of brick shown in Fig. 6, wherein a semi-cylindrical lamina has been removed (or rather omitted) from the end to form shoulders 30 which serve to retain the mortar without forming thin edges such as would result from full grouting in the other embodiments shown.

Obviously many modifications and variations of the present invention are possible in the light of the above teachings. It is therefore to be understood that within scope of the appended claim the invention may be practiced otherwise than as specifically described.

What is claimed is:

A single tier wall comprising a plurality of substantially identical elongated building blocks having planar top and bottom faces and laid insuperposed courses, the blocks of each course being spaced end to end and being staggered with respect to the blocks of the adjacent courses, the two opposite ends of each block having semicylindrical surfaces with vertical axes of curvature, the side walls of each block being tangential to said semicylindrical surfaces, a pair of vertical circular bores in each of said blocks and coaxial with the axes of said semicylindrical surfaces, said bores being of substantially uniform diameter, the radius of each of said bores being substantially smaller than the radius of each of said semicylindrical surfaces, the axes of said bores of each block being spaced from each other a distance substantially equal to the space between two adjacent blocks and the sum of the radii of said two semi-cylindrical surfaces of one block, a segmental-spherical boss concentrically surrounding each of said bores on one of said faces of each of said blocks, a segmental-spherical socket concentrically surrounding each of said bores on the other of said faces of each of said blocks, the bosses of each of Patented Mar. 18, 1958 sockets and bosses being segments of spheres of the same size but with the sockets being greater in depth than the projection of the bosses to grovide a vertically uniform space therebetween to allow for manufacturing-variances and the, presence of foreign matter yet to permit vertically adiacent blocks to be disposed in face to face contact and in substantial alignment, and rods extending through the bores of' said blocks.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS Everett et al Mar. 30, 1909 Florey May 31, 1927 FOREIGN PATENTS Switzerland of 1941 Great Britain of 1943 Great Britain of 1946 

